Tory aide suspended over racist photos on Facebook

A Tory aide was suspended today for allegedly posting images on the internet of a fellow researcher with her face blacked up accompanied by a racist insult.

The damaging revelations came as the Conservatives try to use their annual conference in Blackpool to close the gap on Labour in the opinion polls, ahead of a possible snap election.

Emma Claire Pentreath, a constituency officer for the Hammersmith and Fulham MP, Greg Hands, was shown having her face painted black with a burned cork, on the social networking site Facebook, the London Evening Standard reported.

Philip Clarke, a parliamentary aide to the former attorney general Lord Lyell, was responsible for posting the photographs, according to the website, and the 24-year-old has now been suspended by the Conservatives.

The Standard reported that the photographs, which have since been removed, were accompanied by a caption which read: "Emma's career in politics lies in tatters after she follows Ann Winterton's lead and dresses as a 'Nigger Minstrel'."

Congleton MP Mrs Winterton was sacked as shadow cabinet spokeswoman for agriculture after making a racist joke at a rugby club dinner in 2002.

Mr Clarke, 24 said the postings were "not intended to be racist", but added: "I behaved very stupidly and I bitterly regret it."

A Tory spokesman said; "Racism is completely unacceptable and has no place in the Conservative party."

In March, photographs emerged of Barnet Conservative councillor Brian Gordon, blacked up at a fancy dress party to look like Nelson Mandela.

Opposition parties accused him of racism but a spokesman for Mr Mandela said that there was no "ill intent".

Labour's Dawn Butler, a black MP, said the caption accompanying the latest photos showed that the Conservatives "had not changed one bit".

"It appears that Tory staffers think it is funny to call one another 'Nigger Minstrels'," she said.

"The message needs to get through to this Tory party that this is unacceptable and that the excuse of absent-minded racism is no excuse at all."

"Blacking up" is often viewed as racist because of its connections to the minstrel shows of the 19th and 20th centuries, which promoted the mocking stereotype of a grinning, happy-go-lucky, infantilised black rascal.